Black Swan Murder: The Trial of Ashley Benefield

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A retired Navy intelligence officer and a ballet dancer met at a political dinner in Palm

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Beach.

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13 days later they were married.

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Four years after that, he was dead.

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Shot twice in a bedroom in Lakewood, Ranch, Florida.

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Ashley Benefield said she fired in self-defense.

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The medical examiner said something different.

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August of 2016, a political fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida.

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One of those evenings where everyone has their business cards ready and nobody is quite

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listening to each other's answers.

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You know the energy.

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Douglas Benefield is 54 years old, a retired US Navy intelligence officer, naval flight officer,

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Texas A&M graduate, devout Christian, a man who woke up before 5.30 every single morning

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to read scripture and sit quietly with it before the day came in.

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This wasn't something he mentioned to a lot of people that he did, it was just the architecture

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of how he lived.

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His first wife Renee died nine months earlier from a heart condition that nobody caught in

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time, leaving him to raise their 15 year old daughter, Eva, alone.

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Nine months is really not a very long time.

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He was still very much inside that grief, still trying to figure out the new shape of his

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life.

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And he was at this dinner because you keep moving.

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That's what you do.

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Ashley Buyers is 24, a Maryland youth ballet graduate who had pivoted through swimsuit modeling

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and landed somewhat improbably as a coordinator of evangelical voter outreach for the Trump campaign

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in Sarasota.

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It's not exactly a path that a guidance counselor would sketch out, but the skill set carries over

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more than you'd expect.

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Ballet trained you control projection and committing completely to a version of yourself

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that an audience is meant to receive without question.

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Ashley had been building that muscle since she was a child.

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They met somewhere in that Palm Beach banquet room and Doug was completely leveled.

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He described her afterward as the most amazing person he had ever encountered in his life.

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Within 13 days of that first conversation, they were standing in Charleston, South Carolina,

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getting married.

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13 days.

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You can't even get a library book renewed that many times before they make you return it.

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And Doug hadn't even told his daughter about Ashley before the ceremony.

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His daughter found out that she had a new stepmother, the way most people find out about

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major life changes that happened without them.

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After the fact, all at once, no runway whatsoever.

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By 2017, the Benefits were channeling the energy of their marriage into a shared venture.

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The American National Ballet, launched in Charleston.

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The vision was pretty noble.

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Ashley wanted to build a company that would challenge the long gatekeeping history of

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classical ballet, actively recruiting dancers with diverse body types.

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A different ethnicities and backgrounds, taking on an industry with a well-documented record

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of narrow physical standards.

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This was a real idea with real stakes behind it.

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They recruited 47 dancers from Germany, Argentina, Estonia, and across the country.

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Real professionals who quit their other jobs signed eight-month contracts and relocated

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their lives to Charleston on the promise of health insurance and a company that could

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actually matter.

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Log told people he had secured $10 million from backers.

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He had a private equity background and years of defense contracting.

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Over a dinner table, it sounded like it would work.

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The rehearsal space turned out to be a windowless room about the size of a generous walking

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closet.

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Five miles from where the dancers were living.

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$10 million never showed up.

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Somewhere in the middle of the collapse, Ashley relocated to Florida without telling anyone

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about the company.

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The whole thing folded within months.

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47 people were left holding expensive leases and broken contracts.

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Doug, by multiple accounts, was distributing cash from stuffed envelopes trying to cover

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what he could.

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No documentation, no official records, just a man with cash hoping that it helped.

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It left a lot of people who had done nothing wrong in a very bad place.

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The professional collapse was running parallel to the collapse of the marriage.

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Even before the A and B folded, the relationship had violent episodes.

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During an argument in late 2016, Doug fired a 45 caliber handgun into the kitchen ceiling.

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He later said it was the dumbest thing he'd ever done.

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Which, yeah, obviously.

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Ashley would testify that he also held the gun to his own head and threatened to kill himself

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in front of her.

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That moment became the foundation stone of every legal proceeding that followed.

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By September 2017, Ashley was pregnant and had moved to Florida to stay with her mother

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Alicia.

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From that point forward, the relationship existed almost entirely through courts and investigators.

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She called a domestic violence detective after receiving birthday specialty tea from Doug,

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reporting that it smelled chemical and it may have been tampered with.

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The detective looked into it.

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It was tea.

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Just regular tea.

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He raised the formal theory that Doug had poisoned his first wife Renee.

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Renee's autopsy showed 75% coronary artery blockage, a natural death from coronary artery

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sclerosis.

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While pregnant, Ashley checked herself into Tampa General Hospital, citing fear that tea

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Doug had brought her in bed was laced with heavy metals.

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At September 2018, she saw a permanent injunction in a Florida courtroom.

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The judge heard all of it and issued a ruling with a phrase that would follow this case

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through every proceeding afterward.

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The court found there was not a single centilla of credible evidence supporting Ashley's claims

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of abuse or poisoning.

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Not a centilla.

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That's the word, judged by an amoreland used.

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That ruling put a court documented flag on the pattern of allegations and it sat in the

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case file for the next six years.

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Despite all of it, the legal losses, the years of a strangenment, a judge's documented skepticism,

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the couple had attempted something like a reconciliation in 2019 and in 2020.

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A late September, they had settled on a plan.

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Move to Maryland, live in separate houses, co-parents, their child Emerson.

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On September 27, they were at Alicia's house in Lakewood Ranch, loading a U-Haul.

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Alicia had taken Emerson to the park, around seven that evening, an argument started in

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the bedroom.

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Ashley testified that Doug struck her in the head with his hand, body checker with

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the moving box and came at her in a fighting stance.

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She fired two shots, one to his right leg, one to his right arm.

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That second bullet entered his chest cavity and damaged both lungs.

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Doug got out of the house and reached the neighbor's front door.

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He was taken to a hospital and died about an hour later.

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He was unarmed.

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The trajectory of the fatal bullet contradicted the account Ashley gave.

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The medical examiner concluded that Doug was not facing Ashley when the shot struck him.

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He was turning away from her.

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The entry point was the side of his right arm, the bullet traveling inward toward his chest.

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There were no defensive wounds on Ashley's body.

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Nothing in the bedroom was overturned or disturbed in the way that you would expect from a physical

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struggle.

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A Florida judge would later find that the forensic evidence clearly and convincingly

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undermined the self-defense narrative.

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Ashley Benefield was charged with second degree murder in November 2020.

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The Stan Your Ground Immunity Hearing in July 2023 was denied.

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The case went to trial in July 2024 at the Manatee County Judicial Center.

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The prosecutor argued Ashley had exhausted every legal avenue to keep Doug from Emerson.

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And when those options ran out, she made a different choice.

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The defense attorney argued battered Spouse Syndrome, PTSD, and a survival response from

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a woman who had spent years in documented fear.

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While the trial ran, Ava Benefield was on TikTok, building more than 500,000 followers by telling

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her father's story, and countering the narrative that offense was constructing in court.

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She had already lost her mother in 2015.

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She watched her six-year-old half-sister Emerson appear outside the courtroom in public

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support of Ashley, and said openly afterward that a child that young should not have been

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placed in that position.

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Ava had spent the better part of a decade losing people she loved.

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The jury deliberated for nearly seven hours.

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On July 30, 2024, they returned a verdict of manslaughter with a firearm.

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On December 3, 2024, Judge Matthew White sentenced Ashley Benefield to 20 years in prison,

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followed by 10 years of probation.

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At the synancing, Ava stood and addressed her stepmother directly.

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She said she had carried one question since the day her father was shot, and she'd waited

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four years for the chance to ask it.

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She needed only one answer.

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Why?

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As of early 2026, Ashley is serving her sentence in a Florida State prison.

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Her legal team is pursuing an appeal based on alleged juror misconduct.

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Prison records from February 2026 confirm she was moved to a disciplinary confinement at

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the Ocala facility following an alleged battery on a corrections officer.

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Emerson is about eight years old now growing up with her father gone and her mother serving

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a 20-year prison sentence for his death.

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Ava is still posting, still waiting for an answer to her question.

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Thanks for listening to 10-minute murder, bingeable true crime stories.

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Hello.

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I'm Joe.

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I'm the host.

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And here is an email subject Strange Question.

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Hey, Joe.

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Love the podcast.

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But I do have a strange question to ask you.

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That is a true crime related question that is difficult to answer.

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Rachel in Norman, Oklahoma.

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Rachel, I think it's difficult to answer because I don't know exactly what you're asking.

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I'll do my best here.

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A true crime question that's difficult to answer.

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Sit down somewhere because this one's going to be a thinker.

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So can a vampire police officer enter your house if he has a warrant?

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Because legally, yeah.

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Obviously, but it's a vampire.

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So you got to invite them in for them to come in or hear me out or does the warrant give

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them the invitation.

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Hmm?

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Okay, here's another one.

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If you handcuff someone that communicates with sign language only, are you taking away

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their freedom of speech?

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Okay, there you go.

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I gave you two, Rachel.

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She didn't say answers to those because I don't know how to answer those.

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You said true crime related questions and those are true crime related questions.

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Hey, if you are a brand new listener to this podcast, welcome, first of all, but do me one

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huge favor right now.

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Subscribe to 10 Minute Murder.

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And while you're at it, go ahead and subscribe to my other podcast, True Crime Blueprint.

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You want to contact me, send me any questions or suggest any cases that you'd like me to

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cover on either podcast.

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You can go to my website 10minutemurder.com, find my email there.

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thing that other people should know about, please share this podcast with your friends and

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your family.

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Anyone you think could be into true crime stories like this one.

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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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[Music]