A Revelation From God: The Real Killers of Under the Banner of Heaven

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[Music]

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A man sat down in the spring of 1984 with a yellow legal pad.

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And he said every word he wrote on that legal pad came straight from God.

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And when he put the pin down, there were four names on that page.

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One of those was his very own sister-in-law.

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She was a young mom who'd made it very clear that she did not believe,

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as he claimed to be, that he was a prophet.

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To get on that page, we have to start in a barber's chair in Paisen, Utah.

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[Music]

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[Music]

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Paisen is a little town south of Provo, and that's where Watson Lafferty raised his family.

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Watson was a barber. He was also a chiropractor, which it sounds kind of crazy

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being both of those things at the same time.

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But imagine walking in, you need a little haircut, a little trim,

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a little off the top, and he's like, "Oh, would you also like your back cracked?"

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It's a pretty efficient Saturday, to be honest.

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Anyway, the man with the adjustment table did not trust modern medicine.

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Imagine that. And when one of his daughters had a ruptured appendix,

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he held off on getting her to the hospital.

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And oh, by the way, he beat his wife and he beat his kids.

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And during a fight, he killed the family dog with a baseball bat in front of his kids.

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When one of the boys accidentally shot himself with a arrow,

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from like a bow and arrow, on a Sunday, Watson decided that that kid had broken the Sabbath.

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So, as punishment, he wasn't allowed to seek medical attention until the next day.

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And nobody in the house was allowed to get him help.

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Watson's faith got dangerous the minute any of his kids got hurt.

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And I was a pretty reckless kid myself. I would have lasted about a week in that house.

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Watson had eight kids, mostly boys, and the oldest was named Ron.

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He was the popular athletic one. And when he was 17, he finally stood up to his father physically.

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And then decades later, Ron still called Watson an excellent role model.

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And if you grew up learning to read your dad's mood before you could even read a book,

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you kind of understand how someone can carry both of those things at the same time.

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Ron had a little brother. His name was Dan. He came along four years later.

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The two of them were best friends. Both of them also quick-tempered.

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And each one would have walked through a wall for the other.

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Brenda Wright grew up in Twin Falls, Idaho, the second of seven kids.

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Her mom was a schoolteacher. Her dad was an agronomist, which is a crop scientist.

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And he earned his doctorate at Cornell.

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She was a former beauty queen. And at the University of Idaho,

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her sorority sisters elected her president.

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She then transferred to BYU to study communications.

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And pretty soon she was anchoring a news magazine show on KBYU, the PBS station on campus.

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Which means if you were flipping through this channels back then in Provo,

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there's a really good chance that you would land on Brenda looking every bit to professional.

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She met Alan Laferdy at a BYU student congregation.

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Alan was the youngest brother. They got married.

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And then along came a baby girl named Erica.

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And every family has somebody at the dinner table who says the uncomfortable thing out loud.

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And in mind, it's usually me because I feel like if I don't say the funny thing or the weird thing, I'll die.

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I have to get it out.

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But in the Laferdy family, that person was Brenda.

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And she had a college degree with a whole lot of confidence.

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And she spoke her mind around the Laferdy men, whatever she felt like it.

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And that went exactly how you would imagine it would go.

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She did not believe that her brothers-in-law were prophets as they claimed to be.

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So she told them so.

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Dan's slide into Mormon fundamentalism started with a sandwich shop.

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When the business hit a licensing problem, Dan got mad at the government

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and went looking for backup in the Book of Mormon.

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Pretty soon, he quit paying taxes and he decided that traffic laws didn't apply to him either.

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He also refused to buy baby food.

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Dan would chew up his kid's food himself and spit it into their mouths.

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He would baby bird it to them, disgusting.

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But Dan decided a plural marriage was still God's law.

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And his church excommunicated him over it.

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Ron, meanwhile, worked construction and sat on the Highland City Council.

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He'd met his wife Diana on his mission trip in Florida.

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They had six kids together.

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Then Dan got into his ear.

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Ron grew his hair and his beard out long like a Bible prophet would look.

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Like imagine a Bible prophet in your mind.

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That's how he was trying to grow his hair.

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And this in the early 80s Utah County, where a clean shave was basically a part of the church uniform.

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So he walked around looking like he was right off the set of duck dynasty.

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Diana refused to live in polygamy and she left him.

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Ron believed Brenda had encouraged her to go.

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A relief society leader named Chloe Lowe helped Diana through the divorce.

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And Ron's church excommunicated him with his stake president Richard Stowe on the council that made the call.

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Ron told his youngest brother that Brenda had better stop talking to his ex-wife.

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And that was a big warning.

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Ron was devastated and the hurt curdled into rage.

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He moved into a rundown house in Oram.

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The brothers called the farm and spent his days writing what he believed was scripture.

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The brothers found their people in a fundamental splinter group called the school of the prophets.

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Dan's daughter was seven at the time and years later she said the meetings in the house felt very hush hush and just weird.

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Allen was drifting toward the group with his brothers and Brenda put a stop to it.

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Ron of course was furious and his mind Brenda had already caused him his wife and now she was trying to take away his baby brother.

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Not long after that in March of 1984 Ron sat down with a yellow legal pad and wrote out a revelation he said came straight from God.

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And it ordered the brothers to remove four people and the list started with the brothers wife Brenda and her baby.

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Chloe Lowe came next.

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Richard Stowe was last.

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Ron told people the baby had to go to because she would grow up to be just like her mother.

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And that's a pretty monstrous thing to say about your own family no less a baby.

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When the brothers refused to back off Ron's revelation the group threw him out about four months before the murders.

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You've got a secret fringe group meeting in your living room and they kick you out because you're too extreme.

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I think you might be the problem.

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In Utah July 24th is Pioneer Day a state holiday with parades and rodeos and for a lot of families it's a day that you spend outside in a lawn chair waiting on the fireworks to start.

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That day the brothers drove to Brenda and Allen's apartment in American fork with two drifters who'd been traveling with them.

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Allen was at work Brenda was home with Erica.

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One of the drifters stayed in the car in the driveway.

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He told the jury later that he could hear Ron inside calling Brenda names and then he heard her being beaten.

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He heard Brenda screaming begging them not to hurt the baby and he heard Erica crying for her mom.

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Then it all went quiet.

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Ron beat Brenda and strangled her with the cord from the vacuum cleaner.

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Dan has always said that he's the one who cut both of their throats.

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Brenda was 24 years old.

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Erica was 15 months.

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Minutes later the brothers walked back out to the car covered in blood.

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They drove to Chloe Lowe's house next. She wasn't home. Richard Stowe was supposed to be next and depending on whose account you trust they either took a wrong turn or that same drifter talked Ron into waiting another day.

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I have no idea which one it's true. But they then pointed their car toward Nevada.

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Allen came home and found his wife on the floor and his daughter near the crib.

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And all of this why? For what reason?

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The brothers stayed on the run for two weeks. Police finally arrested them at the circus circus casino in Reno where they were standing in line for the buffet.

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The man whose war with the government started over a sandwich shop.

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The man who wouldn't buy his kids a single jar of baby food got caught while he was waiting on the all you can eat buffet.

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The brothers confessed pretty fast. Dan acted as his own lawyer and he told the jurors not to be afraid to give him the death penalty.

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And then they couldn't agree on it which is why he only got life in prison.

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Ron's case got a little stranger. In the county jail Ron jumped his little brother and kept swinging until his hands hurt.

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And after the jail split him up he announced a new revelation saying Dan would let Ron kill him.

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And Dan prayed about it and agreed.

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Ron tried to take his own life in jail at the end of that year and he stopped breathing for about 15 minutes before paramedics brought him back.

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A jury sentenced him to death in 1985.

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A federal court tossed that verdict in 1991 over how his competency was decided.

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A second jury sentenced him to death in 1996 and Ron chose the firing squad.

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Because why not?

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He died of natural causes in prison in November 2019. He was 78 years old.

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Dan is still serving life.

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And that's the last reporting on any of this case that I could find.

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He called his maximum security unit his monastery.

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And he once told a reporter he expects the prison walls to crumble someday so he can walk out as the prophet Elijah and announce the second coming of Christ.

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In case you're wondering about his mental state.

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Both of the other names on that yellow legal pad were lined up to testify against Ron in 1996.

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Brenda sister Sharon spent decades in court rooms across from Ron.

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And she asked Utah lawmakers to end the death penalty.

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Saying she wished she'd spent those years instead just mourning her sister.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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Bingeable True Crime Stories.

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Hello. I'm Joe. I'm the host and here is an email. Subject. I found an old episode.

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Hey Joe. I randomly went back through your catalog last weekend and I listened to one of your older episodes.

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One that I had not heard before.

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It was interesting hearing the difference between then and now.

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It also made me realize that I've been listening to you for a really long time.

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At this point I feel like we've been through some things together.

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Tommy in Lexington, Virginia.

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Tommy thanks for the email and I appreciate you being an OG listener and thanks for reaching out.

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Finally after all these years.

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And I realize that's how most of you are.

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There's only a small fraction of you that actually send me emails or comment on posts on social media or internet.

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Social media or any of that kind of thing.

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I realize those of you that are just silently listening and not interacting, you're the very large majority.

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And I appreciate you just as much.

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But if you should happen to decide that you would like to send me an email, you can do that.

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If you go to 10minutemurder.com and there you'll find my email address as well as places you can follow on social media.

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Links for that and also links for other places, other platforms you can listen to the podcast on.

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If that's something you want to do.

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Hey, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, welcome.

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Like Tommy, you can go back and listen to older episodes that I've released years ago.

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Or you can just stay current with the newest one that I'm releasing every a couple of them every week.

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And you OG listeners, please keep doing what you're doing, sharing the show with your friends and your family.

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Rating at five stars wherever that's possible, interacting with all the stuff that I put on social media.

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I see it, I recognize it and I really do appreciate all of those things.

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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 10minutemurder.