A Home Movie for Zachary: The Andrew Bagby Case

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[MUSIC]

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A man picking up aluminum cans in a state park in Southwest Pennsylvania found a young doctor lying

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face down on the gravel near his car.

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There was a thin layer of frost on him.

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He was 28 years old.

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His name was Andrew Bagby and he'd spent years starring in his best friends homemade movies.

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Andrew's story starts with a book report.

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[MUSIC]

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Andrew Bagby grew up in the suburbs of San Jose, California.

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And in the first grade, he met a kid named Kurt Keeney, who talked the teacher into letting

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him hand in a screenplay for his book report, which is a bold move for a first grader.

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And then he cast Andrew as one of the stars.

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Kurt kept making movies all through school.

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And once they looked professional, Andrew put some of his med school savings into those

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movies.

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That's a really good friend.

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Andrew was David and Kate Bagby's only kid.

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And his friends said that he was warm and that he had more friends than most people have.

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He went to medical school at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland.

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You have to go way out into the North Atlantic to find it.

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And that's where Andrew met a doctor named Shirley Turner.

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Shirley was 12 years older than Andrew.

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She grew up poor and moved around a lot.

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She got pregnant in college and married the baby's dad.

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After that, she spent years teaching science and chipping away at school until she got

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herself into medical school too, which took her well into her 30s.

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If you pull her social services records, there's a file from 1993.

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Somebody reported she'd been hitting kids and being verbally abusive.

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That she left a child without enough supervision.

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The caseworkers left her some messages and closed the file without ever even talking to

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her.

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That was the whole investigation.

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An ex-boyfriend, back in Pennsylvania, told the inquiry that she kept calling him and

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showing up at his house uninvited.

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And he said that she hit him with a platform shoe and threatened to slit his throat.

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Andrew and Shirley got together in 1999.

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Andrew went back to the states for residency and ended up in family medicine at the Trobe

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Area Hospital in Pennsylvania, while Shirley landed a doctor job out in the Midwest.

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And the whole thing turned into this long-distance mess full of fights about other people and

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where it was all headed.

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In Iowa, Shirley walked out on a 10-year contract.

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If you break a deal like that early, you owe them and she owed more than $156,000.

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In October of 2001, she got a gun permit.

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She bought a Phoenix Arms 22 pistol and took shooting lessons.

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And the last lesson was right before she left to go see Andrew in Pennsylvania.

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That visit ended at the Latrobe Airport, where Andrew broke up with her after a fight

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about him seeing other women.

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Shirley went back home to council bluffs Iowa.

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The next day, she got into her car and drove back toward Andrew.

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And if you map that drive, it's about 946 miles.

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Shirley turned up at Andrew's place early that morning and Andrew told a supervisor that

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she seemed very angry.

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She picked up Andrew's home phone and called in sick to her own job.

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That was a bad idea.

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She also got on his computer and used his internet and at some point that day, somebody saw her car

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and Andrew's car sitting together at Keystone State Park, which is a state park outside of

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the Latrobe.

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The next morning, the man picking up cans found Andrew near his car.

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The autopsy showed he'd been shot five times and hit in the back of the head.

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The bullets were 22 caliber.

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Nobody ever found the gun.

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Shirley's explanations kept moving around.

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In one version, she never even left Iowa.

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In another, she met Andrew at the park.

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She said the gun got stolen and she said she'd also given it to Andrew.

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If you line them up, that's four different stories that Shirley was telling.

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A week later, Shirley left Iowa and on November 16, she was back home in Newfoundland.

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She was pregnant and the ultrasound listed Andrew as the dad.

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Pennsylvania charged her with murder and now you've got a murder suspect sitting in another

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country, which means extradition, with formal requests and paperwork going back and forth

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between governments for as long as it takes.

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The police in Newfoundland arrested her on December 12 and she was back out the same day.

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Her psychiatrist, Dr. John Dussette, walked into the courthouse and put up $65,000 as surety,

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which means if she skipped town, he would lose that money.

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He'd been treating her for about three weeks.

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And let me repeat that part because it is just as weird as it sounds.

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Her psychiatrist, who has been treating her for three weeks now, put up $65,000 to get

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her out of jail.

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And that's a huge favor for someone that you've known for such a short amount of time.

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It doesn't seem exactly platonic.

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Back in California, Kate said that she used to go out her front door and say, "I'm Kate

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Bagby.

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I live in Sunnyvale, California.

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This did not happen to me.

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She was having a hard time processing the reality of the situation."

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Then, she found out that Shirley was carrying Andrew's baby and they packed up and moved across

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the continent to St. John's.

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Zachary Andrew Turner was born there on July 18, 2002.

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A DNA test put the odds that Andrew was his father at 99.9941%.

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If David and Kate wanted to see their grandson, they had to stay on Shirley's good side, which

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means you're sitting across from the woman that you believe killed your son and you have

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to be polite to her because she's the only way that you get to see this baby.

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They started with supervised visits.

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Kurt had been making a tribute movie about Andrew and once he heard about the baby, it turned

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into a letter to Zachary.

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Shirley went to jail that November.

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David and Kate took Zachary in full time.

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They drive him about 112 miles each way so that he could see his mom.

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The review called their child care exemplary, which is review language for they did everything

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right.

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In Appeals Court, let Shirley out in January while she appealed her conviction.

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Since she'd followed all of her conditions and under a consent order, Zachary went back

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into living with her while David and Kate got loads of time with him still.

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Kurt came out for Zachary's first birthday that July.

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And if Shirley was anywhere around, you wouldn't see Kurt because he'd hide so she'd never

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find out that he was there.

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People at the party remembered Zachary sticking close to David and Kate.

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And Shirley said something like "he loved them more and that they should take him."

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Nobody knows what she meant by that.

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Well not exactly.

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Shirley and Zachary went swimming with David and Kate on August 16th and nothing seemed

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off to them.

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The next day Shirley talked with friends, ran errands, made phone calls and wrote letters.

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She also filled a prescription for Laraza Pam.

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Several people who saw her said that she seemed ordinary.

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And at some point after that she took Zachary out to Fox trap Marina on Conception Bay where

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people saw her asking for directions and walking near the water.

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The investigation found that she probably gave Laraza Pam to Zachary and then she went

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into the water holding him.

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They both died August 18th 2003.

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Zachary was 13 months old.

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Shirley was 42.

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Zachary's blood had about 100 times the normal medical level of Laraza Pam.

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The medical examiner ruled Zachary's death a homicide and Shirley's a suicide.

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There was also a baby bottle with liquid left in it.

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Somebody poured it all out before anybody tested it so it will never know what was in that

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bottle.

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The investigation went through about 100,000 pages of documents.

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The report came out in 2006 and said Zachary's death could have been prevented.

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You had police holding a piece of Shirley's history.

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The courts had a piece or doctors had a piece.

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Child welfare had a piece.

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Everybody was so focused on Shirley's rights that nobody ever sat down and looked at Zachary

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safety all by itself.

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The investigation found that 1993 file 2.

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When Shirley came back into the system, she had a different last name and nobody was required

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to write down old names so the file never came up.

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It was right there.

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The medical board found John the psychiatrist guilty of misconduct over that money.

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They ordered him to pay $10,000 and they also ordered the psychiatrist to go see a psychiatrist.

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Kurt finished his movie in 2008 and he called it "Dear Zachary", a letter to a son about

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his father.

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He got screened for members of Parliament in Ottawa which means the kid who handed in a

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screenplay for his first grade book report now had a movie in front of the people who make

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Canada's laws.

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A member of Parliament brought it in Bill C-464 and everyone started calling it Zachary's

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Bill.

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It became law on December 15, 2010.

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In Canada, if you're a judge now, you can keep somebody locked up before trial when that's

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needed to protect any kid under 18.

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David and Kate put up Christmas decorations that year for the first time in years.

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Shirley never went to trial.

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The review decided she was probably the one who killed Andrew.

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When the province checked in 2014, most of the reviews recommendations had been put in

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place in one form or another.

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Although a couple were still only partway done and some of them didn't apply anymore, nearly

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four dozen medical students going into family medicine have gotten a scholarship in Andrew's

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name at the hospital in La Trope.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, bingeable true crime stories.

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Hello, I'm Joe, I'm the host and here's an email.

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I used to work dispatch.

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Joe, six years on the radio quit in 2017 and I still can't hear a certain tone in somebody's

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voice without my shoulders going up.

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Most of what I took calls for was nothing, alarms going off because cats, guys who wanted

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their neighbors' dog dealt with.

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Then once in a while you'd get a call where you knew in the first three seconds.

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And the training was supposed to keep you steady, but the training doesn't do much about

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trying to sleep the next night.

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I listened to your show now, which might therapist as opinions about.

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Here's what I wanted to say.

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You read 911 transcripts like they should be read.

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Flat.

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You don't do the thing where somebody performs the fear.

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That matters more than you'd think.

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When people dramatize those calls, it turns a real worst moment into a bit.

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Keep doing it the way you're doing it.

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Charlene and Indiana.

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Charlene, thank you for taking the time to send me that message.

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And also, thank you for listening to the podcast, despite what your therapist is telling you.

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JK, you should probably listen to your therapist.

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But yeah, I've often thought that's one job I could never do.

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A 911 dispatcher?

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I research these cases and a lot of times I listen to the 911 calls of these cases.

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That's where some of the information comes from and what Charlene is talking about where

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I read the transcripts from these 911 calls.

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To do that, I have to listen to the call and they are traumatizing.

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You hear the fear in people's voices.

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You can hear the pain.

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And if it's a killer that's calling, you can hear the coldness sometimes in their phone call.

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And after the few minutes of whatever call that's on, the 911 dispatcher disconnects with

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the call and then moves on with the rest of their day, I suppose.

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Goes to the break room and eats up some ravioli for dinner.

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I don't know, that's not a job that I could ever see myself, I even attempting to do.

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I can't compartmentalize things like that.

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The way that I suppose that you have to and stay sane doing that job.

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All day long, you're just dealing with people's worst moments of their life.

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And you clock out and you come back the next day and you do it again.

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And again.

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And again.

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No thank you.

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My hat's off to those of you that can do that.

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Alright, if you are a new listener to this podcast or if you've only listened to a few

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do that right now.

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And if you are subscribed and you haven't gone to the websites, you can do that 10minute

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Murder.com.

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On that website, you'll find a way to contact me, you'll find a blog, you're going to find

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links to other places you can listen.

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But most importantly, you'll find links to where you can follow 10 Minute Murder on social

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Please go do that.

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10 Minute Murder.com.

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And that's going to do it.

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That's your episode for today.

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Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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See you next time.

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