Nobody Would Miss Them: The Craigslist Murders of Richard Beasley

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There was a job on Craigslist, 688 acres of Ohio farmland, a furnished two-bedroom trailer,

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$300 a week, and a few cows to feed.

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Dozens of men answered that ad in the fall of 2011, most had been at a work for a while,

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some were even living out of their cars, three of them never made it back home.

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And the man behind that ad was not some faceless stranger.

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He was the large, friendly white bearded guy that everyone in Akron knew as "preacher

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rich."

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Today, we're talking about Richard Beasley and how deliberate every single part of it was.

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[Music]

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Richard Beasley grew up in Akron after his family relocated from Washington, D.C. when he was

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just a few weeks old.

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Unlike so many serial killers that we talk about here, Richard's childhood was really

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rough, an alcoholic, physically abusive stepfather, years bounced between relatives, sexual

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abuse by neighborhood kids that he kept private for decades.

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He graduated from high school in 1976, he learned to trade, he married, at a daughter named

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Tanya, and then he spent the following decades building a criminal record.

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He did time in Texas on a burglary conviction.

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He did six federal years on an illegal weapons charge and got out in 2004.

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In 2005, a dump truck hit his car.

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He had serious spinal injuries.

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He developed an opiate dependency and a $125,000 settlement followed.

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He used a cane to get around, sometimes a wheelchair.

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He told people that he'd put that settlement money that $125,000 into a halfway house on

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Yale Street in Akron.

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He had, in fact, done exactly that.

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He also filled it with women that he was coercing into sex work through a combination of crack

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cocaine, meth, and the patient, practice psychological manipulation of someone who had

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been studying vulnerability his whole life.

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He posted their profiles on back page.

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He drove them to hotel rooms and then he took the money.

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On the outside, he was a large, bearded Santa Claus looking guy around Akron's faith community.

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He visited the county jail twice a week to do ministry.

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He would put money on inmates' commissary accounts and wrote letters to judges advocating

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for women's early release into his custody.

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He had this whole strategy that he called the "God hook."

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Scripture, paternalism, promises of redemption, a father figure arriving right when someone

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needed one the most.

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The courthouse knew him by name.

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People called him "Pretcher Rich," Chaplin Rich.

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He genuinely looked like Santa Claus, which is either the funniest thing or the most unsettling

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detail in this entire story.

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Maybe a combination of both.

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Detective Pasco of the Akron Vice Unit had been building a human trafficking case against

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him since 2009.

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At late 2010, police executed a search warrant on the Yale Street House.

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Computer forensics, a cooperating witness, they had him.

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And then a judge released Beasley on Bond.

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Out on Bond, mid-2011, and fully aware that the digital evidence against him was going

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to bury him at trial, Beasley needed a new identity, an actual different person's name

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and driver's license to pick up medication, open accounts, and evade the warrant stacking

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up against him.

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To get one, he needed to find someone who could vanish without the world immediately

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noticing.

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Enter, 16-year-old Brogan Rafferty.

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Beasley had taken Rafferty in when the kid was 10.

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His father worked long hours and was mostly gone.

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His mother was on the streets with a drug addiction.

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Beasley stepped into that father figure gap and never left.

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At 2011, Rafferty was 6'5", 230 pounds, and still completely under Beasley's psychological

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control.

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They went everywhere together.

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The enormous teenager driving his white 1998 Buickless saber with Beasley riding in the

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passenger seat.

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The whole town knew them as a pair.

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His Craig's list ad, red, wanted, caretaker for farm.

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Simply watch over a 688 acre patch of Hilly Farmland and feed a few cows.

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You get 300 a week and a nice two bedroom trailer.

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Someone older and single preferred, but will consider all.

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Relocation, a must.

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Dozens of men responded to that ad.

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And here's the thing.

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Beasley didn't pick the first name on the list.

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He conducted actual interviews.

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He met candidates at the Chapel Hill Mall Food Court and at restaurants near Caldwell.

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When one applicant mentioned a martial arts background, Beasley entered the meeting and

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walked away immediately.

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Another mentioned a fiancé.

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Beasley stopped returning his calls.

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Anyone with someone who would immediately notice they were missing got cut.

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He was building a profile of invisible men.

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People who could go missing and no one would really notice or care.

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Ralph Geiger was 56, a former construction business owner who had been staying at an

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Akron shelter since the recession dismantled his livelihood.

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No close family contacts.

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Beasley actually knew him through mutual connections to a motorcycle club.

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On August 8, 2011, the three of them checked into a best western in Caldwell.

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The next morning, they drove to a wooded area off of Don Warner Road.

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Beasley told Geiger he was showing him the farm entrance.

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He was carrying a loaded 38 and mentioned something about coyotes.

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Geiger turned to follow the path.

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Beasley shot him once in the back of the head.

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Rafferty retrieved a shovel.

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He stripped the body, buried it four feet down and covered the grave with lime.

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On the drive home, Rafferty stopped at a rest stop and threw up.

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Beasley started using Ralph Geiger's driver's license to pick up prescription pain medication

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that very same week.

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On the drive back, he reminded Rafferty that he knew where his mother and sister lived.

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He understood exactly what that meant.

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In October, David Pauley responded to the ad.

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He was 51 unemployed for two years living in Norfolk, Virginia.

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He loaded everything he owned into a U-Haul, hitched behind his blue Dodge pickup and drove

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to Ohio to meet Jack Gaylord at a Bob Evans.

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They told him to leave his truck at a nearby gas station.

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Then they drove him to Noble County.

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Beasley then sold the truck for $1,000 and told people that he had scored huge at a storage

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unit auction.

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On November 6, Scott Davis, 49 years old from South Carolina, met Beasley and Rafferty

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at a show knees for breakfast.

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Beasley bought the meal.

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They then drove him to Noble County.

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Walking ahead through the trees, Davis heard the metallic click of a revolver cocking behind

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him.

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He turned.

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The gun misfired on the first pull.

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Davis shoved the weapon aside.

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The second shot hit him in the elbow.

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He ran into the woods and did not stop.

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He hit in the undergrowth for seven hours, bleeding, listening to Beasley and Rafferty crashing

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through the brush.

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When it was dark enough, he climbed to a hilltop, found a house knocked on the door.

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The homeowner called 911.

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With Noble County now compromised, Beasley moved fast.

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Timothy Kern was 47, divorced, occasionally sleeping in his car.

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He had answered the ad.

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They met at a waffle house off I-77 and one week after Davis escaped, Leward Kern to a

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wooded strip behind the rolling acres mall in Akron, telling him they were looking for

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a lost watch.

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Kern was shot five times.

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Rafferty dug the grave.

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Then they went to McDonald's.

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Digital forensics traced the Jack Gaylord Craig's list account to an IP address linked to Beasley's

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email.

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On November 16, detectives pulled Rafferty out of class at Stowe Monroe Falls High School.

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He protected Beasley at first.

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That evening, with his parents sitting in the room during a second interview, he broke.

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Items from Paulie's trailer turned up in his bedroom.

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He was arrested and eventually led investigators to the graves in Noble County.

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He's trial ran in October 2012.

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His defense argued duress and given six years of psychological conditioning by Beasley,

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it was not a baseless argument.

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The prosecution pointed to his computer search history.

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After the first murder, Rafferty had searched, first killed, and soprano's first whack.

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The jury convicted him on October 30th.

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Life without parole.

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The death penalty was off the table only because he was 16 when it happened.

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Beasley's trial started in February 2013.

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He arrived in a wheelchair, playing the old frail man outmaneuvered by a conniving teenager.

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He testified that Scott Davis had pulled a gun first on him, claiming it was retaliation

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for Beasley serving as a police informant.

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Davis took to the stand and identified Beasley in open court.

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The jury convicted Beasley on 26 counts.

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He chose not to make a statement or ask for mercy at sentencing.

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April 4th, 2013.

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He was sentenced to death.

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Richard Beasley's appeals have ground through the courts for over a decade.

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The Ohio Supreme Court upheld his convictions in 2018.

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His execution is currently scheduled for February 16th, 2028 at the Ross Correctional Institution.

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His daughter, Tanya, appeared on a show called Monster in My Family in 2017 and disclosed

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that she had been the one who taught her father how to post ads on Craigslist.

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She later sat across from David Polly's son and told him that she had been carrying that

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ever since.

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And that's not a burden that she deserves, but she carries it anyway.

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Ralph Geiger was 56.

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David Polly was 51.

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Timothy Kern, 47.

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They simply answered a job advertisement.

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They trusted the man who bought them breakfast.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder.

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Binge will trigger my stories.

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I'm Joe.

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I'm the host.

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And at this point is where I would normally read an email, but as you can tell, I've got

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the hiccups.

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I know it sounds dumb.

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And I could just go back and re-record this, but if you had any idea how long it took me 10

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minutes, a 10 minute story I just told you, I'm embarrassed how long it took me to record

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that because I kept having to go back and delete the hiccups out of it.

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In almost 700 episodes of doing this podcast, this has never happened to me.

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I don't think.

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Allergies, I've had the cold.

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I've had a cold.

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I've had the flu.

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I've had all kinds of things.

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A lot of allergies, by the way.

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But never the hiccups.

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But tonight it got on me and it won't leave me alone.

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So this stretch right now that I'm talking, they've just disappeared all of a sudden.

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Like for the past hour, that's all I can do is just hiccup every couple sentences and

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now it...nothing.

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That's great.

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Alright, well, here we are.

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If you're new, make sure you subscribe.

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If you enjoy the podcast, share it with your friends and your family, and that's going

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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]