Ice Cream and a Shallow Grave: The Bobby Greenlease Kidnapping

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In 1953, a woman walked into a Catholic school in Kansas City, told the nuns that a little

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boy's mother had just had a heart attack, and walked out with a six-year-old who was

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dead before lunch.

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The ransom demand that followed was the largest in American history.

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The money that disappeared after the arrest has never been found.

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This is the green lease kidnapping, and it starts with the most powerful family in the

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room.

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Robert Greenleese, senior, was someone the word "successful" couldn't quite contain.

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He arrived in Kansas City in the early years of the 20th century, secured a Cadillac

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dealership in 1908, right at the moment when owning a Cadillac meant that you had genuinely

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arrived somewhere worth arriving at, and kept expanding from there.

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By the 1950s, his Greenleese motor car company stretched across Kansas City, Oklahoma City,

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and markets throughout the Great Plains.

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He lived in Mission Hills, Missouri, a neighborhood where the hedges were trimmed so precisely

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they looked slightly embarrassed for you if you showed up uninvited.

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At 65, he married Virginia Pollock, and they had a son named Bobby.

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Robert Greenleese, Jr. was born February 3rd, 1947, and by every account that little boy

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was the center of his father's world in the most complete way possible.

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In August of 1953, one month before everything fell apart, Robert Senior had taken six-year-old

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Bobby on a summer vacation to Europe.

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They'd just come home.

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Bobby was about to start his first year at the French Institute of Notre Dame des Sions,

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a Catholic school in Kansas City.

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Life for that family was in full bloom.

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Carl Austin Hall grew up in Pleasanton, Kansas, as the son of a prominent attorney, with

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every advantage that a boy in that era could reasonably expect.

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A family named that opened doors, a private education, advantages most people spend years trying

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to build from scratch.

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Hall looked at it all and decided that it should require less effort on his part.

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In 1931, when he was 11, his exasperated parents enrolled him at Kimper Military School in

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Boonville, Missouri, hoping that structure would do what they hadn't been able to do.

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One of his classmates there was Paul Robert Greenleese, the adopted son of Kansas City's

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most prominent automotive family.

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Paul didn't befriend Paul so much as study him.

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He developed a fixation on that name and on that family.

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Ruded entirely in the feeling that their wealth was adjacent to something that he was owed.

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When Carl Hall's father died and left him the farm and a substantial inheritance, he

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burned through it on gambling, and what people at the time politely called the High Life.

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By the late 1940s, he was robbing cab drivers.

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His entire run of taxi robberies in 1951 netted him $33, which is genuinely one of the worst

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returns on criminal investment you're likely to encounter.

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For that, he received a five-year sentence at Missouri State Penitentiary, served just

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over two years and was paroled in April of 1953.

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He walked out of prison with exactly one plan.

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Bonnie Emily Brown was born 1912 in Clearmont, Missouri to a prosperous farming family.

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She married in 1932 to a man named Vernon Headley, who turned out to be an Oklahoma bank robber.

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Vernon was killed by law enforcement in 1935, leaving Bonnie Widow at 23 and pointed in a direction

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that she never quite corrected.

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By the early 1950s, she was in a bungalow on South 38th Street in St. Joseph, Missouri,

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hosting parties the neighbors still remembered, drinking heavily and using her home for prostitution

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to fund the whiskey.

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She had inherited some money from her father, most of it was gone.

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Hall and Headley met at a bar in May of 1953, about three weeks after his release.

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Within two days, he had moved in.

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Together, they were working through approximately one bottle of whiskey per day.

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Hall understood almost immediately what Bonnie offered beyond company.

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She looked like a respectable, middle-aged woman.

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Probably the sort of person a school might waive through an entrance without asking a follow-up question.

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That was the architecture of his entire plan.

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Carl Hall spent the summer of 1953 studying the Greenleese family's routines and even visited

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the school to walk the grounds.

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He spent those months coaching Headley on what to say, how to carry herself, and what story

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would get a Catholic school to release a six-year-old without hesitation.

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Hall had decided from the beginning that Bobby would not be coming home.

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He considered the child evidence and had no intention of leaving evidence behind.

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At 10.55 in the morning, on September 28th, Bonnie Headley walked into Notre Dame des Sions,

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dressed conservatively and told Sister Morand that Virginia Greenleese had suffered a

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sudden heart attack while shopping on the Country Club Plaza and had been rushed to St.

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Mary's Hospital.

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She presented herself as Bobby's aunt, sent to bring him to his mother's side.

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Sister Morand went to retrieve Bobby from his classroom.

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Bobby was six years old, did not know this woman.

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But an adult that he trusted brought her to his door with an emergency, and children

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are wired to follow that signal.

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On the drive away, Hall and Headley chatted with him about his pets.

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They stopped and bought ice cream.

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They needed him calm and were willing to be kind for as long as that served them.

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After switching to Headley's 1951 Plymouth station wagon at a cat's drugstore in Westport,

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they crossed the state line into Kansas and drove to a field near Lenexa.

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Carl Hall's first attempt to strangle Bobby failed because the ropeied bought was too

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short to get adequate leverage.

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In the struggle, Bobby lost several front teeth.

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Hall then shot the six-year-old in the back of the head with a snub-nose 38-calibre

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revolver.

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Bobby Greenleese was dead less than an hour after leaving school.

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The drove back to St. Joseph buried him in a shallow, foot deep grave in Headley's backyard,

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wrapped in plastic, covered with lime, and planted fresh flowers over the disturbed earth.

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That same evening, the first ransom note went in the mail.

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The ransom demand was $600,000 in 10 and $20 bills.

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The largest ever-demanded in American history at that point.

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A follow-up letter included the Jerusalem Medal Bobby had been wearing that morning as proof

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of life for a child who was already gone.

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The notes told Robert Sr. that Bobby was fine, just homesick, and would be home within

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24 hours of payment.

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Robert Sr. agreed to every condition.

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Arthur Eisenhower, a vice president at Commerce Trust Company and the brother of President

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Dwight Eisenhower, spent hours with bank employees recording the serial number of every one of

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the 40,000 bills going into the Duffelback.

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That work became the only thread investigators had once the money started moving.

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Over the following week, the Greenleese family received 15 phone calls and more than half a

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dozen letters, each a fresh lie delivered to a father who believed that his son was still

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alive.

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On October 4, the Duffelback was dropped near a bridge on Lee's summit road in Eastern

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Jackson County.

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Hall confirmed the pickup by calling the Greenleese home at one in the morning, and then

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he and he drove nearly 400 miles to St. Louis.

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In St. Louis, Hall adopted the alias Steve Strand and started tipping bartenders with

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$100 bills.

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He hired a cab driver named John Oliver Hager as a personal driver and at him $2,500

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for company and then told him openly that he was an ex-convict.

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Hager reported his well-funded passenger to his boss, who had connections inside the St.

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Louis Police Department.

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On October 6, police arrived at Hall's room in the townhouse hotel, claiming they were

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investigating a gun complaint.

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When they found the metal suitcases packed with cash, all reportedly looked at them and

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said, "The jig is up."

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Heddy was arrested shortly after still asleep at the Arsenal Street Department.

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When the money was officially logged at the precinct, the total unrecorded was $288,000.

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That left $312,000 on accounted for.

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Hall maintained until his execution that the full $600,000 had been in those suitcases.

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A federal investigation found the officers had stopped somewhere between the arrest and

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the precinct rather than going directly in.

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Both were convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison.

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The money was never recovered.

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Between 1953 and 1956, only 115 of the missing bills were ever identified in circulation.

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Bobby's body was found beneath the flower trellis and Heddy's back yard on October 7.

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Hall and Heddy both pleaded guilty.

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The jury deliberated 68 minutes and recommended death for both.

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On December 18, 1953, less than three months after the abduction, they were executed together

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in the gas chamber at Missouri State Penitentiary.

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Heddy holds the distinction of being the only woman ever executed by the federal government

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via lethal gas.

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Witnesses reported that as the gas began to rise, she leaned toward Hall and whispered

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for him to be a man.

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He did not, according to her, appear to be managing that very well.

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Robert Greenleese Sr. died in 1966, haunted in his final years by the knowledge that his

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wealth had made his son a target.

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Virginia Greenleese lived well into the 21st century, largely a recluse, permanently marked

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by a Monday morning when a woman she'd never met walked into a school and took everything.

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For decades, parents in Kansas City and St. Louis used the name's Carl and Bonnie, the way

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other families used the Boogie Man.

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Because sometimes the stories that scare people the most are the ones nobody made up.

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

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I'm Joe, the host, hello.

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Here's an email.

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Subject Hotel Room Mistake.

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Hi, Joe.

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I travel a lot for work and I made the mistake of listening to your podcast alone in a hotel

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room in Amarillo right before bed.

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Then the ice machine in the hallway made some weird noise at 2 a.m. and suddenly I was convinced

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I was about to become the opening scene of a future episode.

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So thanks for that.

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Julie in Amarillo, Texas.

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Now, Julie, I know you're not trying to blame that on me.

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As an also skittish type person, you should know better.

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Strange place alone in the middle of the night.

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Put the podcast down, Julie.

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I've said it before, that's why I listen to Stand Up Comedy as I'm going to bed.

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And in my own home, I listen to Stand Up Comedy to get all this stuff out of my brain to try

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to purge it before I get some sleep.

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Multiple times in my life, I've heard a strange noise in the middle of the night.

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Convents that someone was breaking in or had already broken in, woke up, walked around

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the house with a shotgun in my underwear, only defined that it was the ice maker.

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So I get it.

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But also, we know better.

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Julie, thank you for the email.

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Okay, if you're new to listening to this podcast, this is like the handful of first times that

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you've listened to it and you have not yet subscribed, please do that right now.

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Subscribe to 10 Minute Murder right now.

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You can also go to 10minutemurder.com and find out how to contact me.

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The different places you can follow the show on social media and read the blog if you want

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to.

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I do need to mention there is a brand new podcast that I do.

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It's out right now.

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It's called True Crime Blueprint.

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It's true to this one in that it's me telling the stories.

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It's all me, but it's much, much longer.

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There's no time constraint on True Crime Blueprint.

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So if you like this, but you wish there was more of it, well, I've got great news for you.

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True Crime Blueprint exists.

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So search for that and listen to it wherever you're listening to this podcast.

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And that's going to do it.

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That is 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.